The management of mature oil fields (also known as brownfields) is principally based on the periodical setting of well controls, which may also include shutting wells in and switching injectors/producers to producers/injectors. Expensive capital investments such as the drilling of new wells are not typically contemplated in mature fields. Thus, mature oil fields can be an attractive component of a field portfolio of an oil and gas company, for example, in periods where hydrocarbon sale price has a relatively low value.
Examples of well settings include wellhead choke size at injector wells or frequency of electrical pumps at producers. The modification of these settings can be an arduous task that cannot be performed with arbitrary frequency. Available state-of-the-art solutions provide well controls that are very difficult to use directly in the real field.
While brownfield management in industry may include heuristic procedures adjustment of well settings, even with computational efficiency, in general, the existing mechanisms may lack accuracy (e.g., in terms of solution optimality) and robustness, for example, as the existing mechanisms may not be based on formal, solid principles and, thus, in some cases may fail unexpectedly and not provide satisfactory results.